


Say It's So

by ParadiseBird



Series: Diarmute AU week 2020 [1]
Category: Pilgrimage (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:34:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25390186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadiseBird/pseuds/ParadiseBird
Summary: Written for Diarmute AU Week, prompt 1: SoulmatesDiarmuid is rescued from a pack of bullies by the school janitor, a silent man whom everyone says is a halfwit.Diarmuid doesn't think twice about telling his woeful life story to this passive company, not knowing how well he is understood, or how much one conversation will change everything.
Relationships: Brother Diarmuid/The Mute
Series: Diarmute AU week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1833718
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	Say It's So

**Author's Note:**

> Gosh I love AUs! I've always wanted to write a Soulmates one.
> 
> This is set in a more credulous time before the internet where mysterious markings couldn't so easily be looked up. 1980s or so.

The tousle-haired boy sat on the steps and only sighed as he picked gravel out of the graze on his knee, then looked reflectively up into the sky, at the puffy cloud that filled the gap between the refectory and the gymnasium. 

He started talking, his voice melodious and bittersweet. He didn’t look at David as he did so, probably knew, like everyone else, that the janitor was a mute, probably thought that he was simple. But in any case, Diarmuid spoke at him, explained why those boys had been pushing him around, why David had had to come along and swing his mop at them to drive them off.  
_  
Of course, growing up, everyone dreamed of what their soulmate would be like. Pauper or prince? Short or tall? Someone down the street or the other side of the globe? The only certainty was that everyone had one, and eventually the two of you would meet._

_Everyone, that is, apart from Diarmuid. Like every other five-to-six-year-old, Diarmuid had poked curiously at the mottled marks on his chest that looked like a row of bruises, while his parents discussed among themselves what letters they thought were emerging. The first words that one’s destined soulmate would speak to one. Diarmuid had six elder siblings who had all gone through this before, and the novelty of the Soul Mark had worn off a bit in his household (though Diarmuid did remember his brothers screaming each other’s phrases in provocation while running around the garden, giggling madly). Diarmuid’s mother had not seen his developing Soul Mark for a month when she remembered one day as he came home from school and ordered Diarmuid to show her how it was getting on._

_She’d squinted at it for a good, long while. She’d wet her thumb and given it a rub as if cleaning it of dirt, while Diarmuid tried to be a good boy and stand still._

_Diarmuid was six and a half. He could read the printed books in his classroom, but grown ups’ handwriting was still indecipherable. Whoever his soul mate was had extra-wextra fancy handwriting because Diarmuid couldn’t even make out a single letter. It seemed that his mother couldn’t either. Diarmuid remembered getting rather chilly while his family all came over (even Aunts and Uncles and Grandma May from down the street) to take their turn at reading his Soul Mark._

_Instead of words, there were sketchy circles and squiggles; arrows; symbols ‘like hieroglyphics!’ offered his brother Owen, who was doing Ancient Egypt at school. ‘Looks like directions to buried treasure’, his Auntie Ella said. His sister Ronda took a photo with her polaroid camera to show her friends. Diarmuid just shivered and got shy, because he was a quiet boy in a loud family and he usually got forgotten._

_The inevitable next step was for mother to take him to the church to consult Father Geraldus. The man was very tall and his sermons rang down the church nave like the clarion call of an avenging angel. His eyes burned with holy fervour and speaking to him made his mother’s voice go tremulous and stuttery, which was unheard of for Maggie O’Leary. Diarmuid was not just a little bit in awe of him._

_They went into the sacristy and Diamuid pulled up his top and Father Geraldus’ towering form bent on one knee and his face came very close, those piercing eyes on Diarmuid’s naked skin, inspecting the strange marks that weren’t English or Irish or French or Hieroglyphics (Owen had checked) or anything else they could find in the encyclopaedia. Father Geraldus’ fingers, that looked as cold as marble, were actually warm and very strong as they directed Diarmuid this way and that for a long while._

_Father Geraldus, a man with the God-given duty to lead his parishioners past the limits of their ignorance, had eventually stood with face oh-so grave and voice oh-so somber when he had declared that the devil had interfered with God’s holy plan for the child. Diarmuid’s mother had gasped and put her hand to her mouth, and Diarmuid had felt cold with shame and wondered whether he could pull his top down yet._

_What the marks meant, said the Holy Roman Church (via Father Geraldus) was that Diarmuid was especially vulnerable. Henceforward, Diarmuid would have to be extra vigilant in denying every form of sin and maybe one day the marks would unscramble into proper words and they would know he was saved._

_“He may appear a good and honest Catholic boy,” Father Geraldus had said in a voice that was no less menacing for how quiet it had become, his eyes glittering into Diarmuid’s own, “but the devil whispers in his ear.”_

_From that day on, Diarmuid was terrified of his own thoughts. He heard the devil’s whisper in quiet moments, and sang hymns under his breath when the whispers said sinful things, like, wouldn’t he like a shiny blue bicycle just like Jeremy’s? Or, couldn’t he just say that the cat went up on the worktop and knocked the milk bottle off, not Diarmuid’s clumsy fingers? He recited the Lord’s prayer when he thought of hell and couldn’t get to sleep. He exhausted himself with good deeds, desperate to prove that he wasn’t destined for the pit. His family prayed for him before they started their dinner every night, and sometimes Diarmuid’s mother would swoop down out of the blue and hug him and sob ‘My poor boy’; honestly, Diarmuid had never had so much attention lavished on him. On the other hand, his brothers would never let him play with them anymore. Diarmuid couldn’t blame them._

_Word got around, as it always did when Auntie Ella got wind of it, and Diarmuid’s name among the children of the town became ‘Demon Diarmuid’. He heard them say it about him, or a brave boy might shout it as he went past, but in general they were all so scared of one who was certifiably marked by the devil that they didn’t dare to bully him much._

_Diarmuid put his head down and read the Bible over and over again until he could quote it as well as the spinsters who sat in the third pew. He kept his hair brushed and tied his shoes in double knots and gave all his paper round money to his mother._

_Every night, before and after his bedside prayers, he checked down his pyjama top to see whether his Soul Mark had unscrambled. Sadly, the signs remained unchanged every time._

_He was twelve when he decided that he was going to become a monk when he grew up, which was the only way he saw to go about controlling his devilish tendencies, whenever they should show themselves. His family all agreed that this was a wonderful idea and his mother gave him a watery smile. Ronda even let him hold her baby that day, for a little while._

_It was around this time that Diarmuid started Grammar School, and being so obsessed with his studies, what with having no friends and idle hands being the devil’s play things and all that, he was nearly top of all his classes, except sport because the other boys never passed the ball to him or tripped him up or hid his plimsols (they were getting a bit bolder about showing their dislike of ‘Demon Diarmuid’ from this age on)._

_The teachers did not like Diarmuid either, and would usually humiliate him if he made any effort to ingratiate himself by offering to clean the blackboards or hand out the textbooks. They liked to make an example out of him. In Brother Marcus’ class he never looked up from his exercise book since the teacher had told him he didn’t want Diarmuid’s ‘soulless eyes’ upon him. Brother Michael would sometimes decide that Diarmuid’s answer was insolent and he would learn his lessons better if he was standing in a corner, facing the wall. Brother Riley liked to use the cane._

_It might seem harsh, but Diarmuid had got used to it all, and even if his treatment hurt a bit sometimes, it was best for his redemption that he not forget he was marked and vulnerable to sin. There was always a monastic life to look forward to, a spark of hope on the horizon. As soon as he left school at the end of this summer term, his mother had said that he could begin his training as a novitiate. He was thinking about a vow of silence, something that would really test him. His mouth was always flapping away, though usually he tried to fill it with prayers and hymns, and only the birds would listen to him.  
_  
They were fairly private here, side by side on some back steps when most of the pupils and staff had gone home for the day. David had all the keys on a ring on his belt, and he’d take as long as he needed to finish his mopping and checks and lock the school for the night. If he wanted to take an hour to sit and listen to this boy pouring out his story, a boy who was always alone, always taking the brunt of bullying and mischief in the playground and always turning the other cheek, then David could take an hour to do so, and go home to his dinner a little later. One outcast to another – it was his duty to listen. What more could he do? 

David had heard the nickname the rest of them gave the boy – staff and teenagers alike – but he didn’t involve himself in the gossip of this small town he’d washed up in so he’d never known the cause. He couldn’t help but wonder if any of these local dimwits had ever taken the time to listen to Diarmuid, or watch how he was the first to help pick up another student’s fallen books, the last to point and laugh at misfortune, never faltering though all his kindnesses were rejected. David had seen it all, a silent witness to all that happened here. From under his scruffy fringe, he found his eyes drawn more often than not to the boy’s gentle smile, his large, timid eyes. In David’s humble view there wasn’t anyone else who radiated with such innocent, sweet purity; not in all Christendom. His thoughts often wandered to the only one who seemed to notice David as he went about his duties. The only one who would give him a shy smile when their gazes met, a blush darkening his cheeks before his eyes dropped.

But David hadn’t expected to find that he had so much in common with the small lad. Both of them had been cursed with strange soul marks – the words neatly scrawled across his own broad chest were a cruel joke, or a constant reminder of his own lonely, mute existence.

David shifted, getting a little numb on the step, but as long as Diarmuid wanted to sit and recover, David would wait with him. When he was ready, he’d watch and see the lad made it safely down the street. Probably best Diarmuid didn’t hurry, in case those boys were hiding somewhere, waiting to jump out and thrash him again.

Diarmuid eventually got stiffly to his feet, testing his weight on his injured knees, wincing a bit. David passed him up his backpack and Diarmuid smiled at him. He hobbled towards the side path that led to the school gate, and David walked along with him. 

As they were about to turn around the building, just before they were in view of the school fence, David put a hand out and stopped the boy. His heart was suddenly pounding at what he was about to do; something he’d not tried in a long time. He needed his hands, so he released Diarmuid, who was now looking confusedly up at him.  
_  
You are not forsaken. You are an angel._

The signs came back with difficulty to David’s hands. Diarmuid would not understand, but David could not leave it unsaid.  
Diarmuid’s eyes blew wide, and he stared as if he’d never seen David before.

“You can speak!”

The words came and went in a flash, a bolt that left thunder booming off all the vertices of his mind, echoing familiar words that had resounded so loudly in the mute’s interior, words that he’d imagined spoken aloud to him so fervently, hopelessly. 

“They said you were – you know – a halfwit or something,” Diarmuid continued, flustered.

Without thinking, he gripped Diarmuid’s shoulders again, his jaw clenched open, desperate to say – to communicate somehow.  
Like a madman, David tore at the blue boiler suit that he wore, stained with the grime of his job, got the sleeves all the way off. Diarmuid was a frozen presence in front of him. There was a white t-shirt under the boiler suit; that came off too, wrenched ungently. He was half-dressed now, his chest heaving, shirt still tangled around one arm.

Diarmuid’s white little face wore a poleaxed expression. David took his hand in his own and pressed it to David’s chest, where the words of his Soul Mark were almost hidden by wiry hair. His instruction was clear, he hoped.

Diarmuid’s fingers drifted from one side to the other, revealing the words bit by bit.

“But that’s - that’s-” Diarmuid muttered, stroking over the words again, then again. “That’s my handwriting. That’s impossible.” His wide eyes watered when they met David’s again. “That’s - my Soul Mark – it's – I don’t,” he said, finding his thoughts hard to arrange. Some sort of revelation dawned across his face like a sunrise. “It’s - it’s your language! It’s signs!”

If David thought he had had seen Diarmuid truly smile before, he was mistaken. It was a new face that beamed up at him now, indescribably beautiful. David grinned back at him – grinned! He’d not grinned since he’d been a toddler on his mother’s hip. He’d thought it was impossible for him, but now he had no power to stop it. He suddenly had an armful of Catholic schoolboy caught firmly to his bare chest, making him stumble back a step.

“Sign language – it’s sign language,” Diarmuid cried between his laughter and sobs. He broke apart and freed his own slim chest from his school shirt – right there beside the school building, and David recognised the written form of his signs, jotted as if by his own hasty hand. _You are not forsaken. You are an angel._

***

It was a tenuous miracle, finding each other; a precious bubble that they had to guard in cupped hands. After school, behind doors locked with the only key, they could have time together. There were secret kisses full of promise, touches that left Diarmuid dreaming through his classes and unbothered by his classmates’ bullying and the Brothers’ punishments for his inattention. He didn’t care much that he wasn’t top of his classes any more. Whatever truths he’d been learning, they were nothing to the enormity of finding he’d been lied to all of his life. That part of his life no longer felt real; only the heat of David’s strong arms and the look in his dark eyes was real.

Diarmuid insisted on learning sign language, David’s notes for the movements helping him to study them in his own time, and Diarmuid took care to hide the papers when he got home lest he be accused of communing with the devil. He wanted to know David’s words.

“We’ll go to Dublin,” Diarmuid murmured into David’s ear one afternoon near the end of the Summer term, then he pressed kisses on his cheeks and neck. They could go away from the mutterings in town, from the prayers of Diarmuid’s family, from Father Geraldus, from betrayal and sadness. David could tell him no now and be understood, but he only clutched the boy closer in his arms, consenting to his dream.

Life was theirs, together. It was only just beginning.  
In a month, they might be walking arm-in-arm out of a registry office, a freshly stamped license ratifying their status as Soulmates; they might find a small flat with a rickety bed and a draughty window with views over Dublin's rooftops, and they might turn the light on to talk all night.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments welcomed! I love to hear from you.


End file.
